had been for the purpose of luring his victims. He’d returned to his basement apartment in the South Bronx from jail only to find that his landlord had tossed all of his belongings out on the sidewalk and rented the room to someone else. That left him with the clothes he walked out of jail wearing, plus the tattered gray hooded sweatshirt he’d dug out of a Dumpster.
He lived most of the time on the streets or in various homeless shelters, so his bathing was infrequent, too. But Kadyrov didn’t care. He desired two things in life—crank and sexual killing, each having become an addiction. Only torturing and murdering young women gave him the same sort of high he got from speed; indeed, each seemed to enhance the pleasure of the other.
The craving for both had increased while he was in jail. He’d only been out for two weeks when shortly after shooting up one afternoon, he spotted Dolores Atkins as she was entering the tenement off Anderson Avenue. He’d quickly made up hismind and bounded up the steps in time to catch the security gate before it closed and enter behind her. She was a little older than he’d thought at first glance but was a brunette and a close enough resemblance to his whore mother.
Dolores was clearly uncomfortable when he got on the elevator after her. And she avoided eye contact when he offered “please, to help” her with one of her bags. “No, thank you,” she’d said tersely.
In the past, if his efforts to charm the women into gaining access to their apartments didn’t work, he’d have moved on to a more cooperative victim. But there was something about this woman, maybe the way she summarily rejected his offer to help, that really made him angry.
He suddenly grabbed her by the throat with one hand as he held the blade of his knife to her neck with the other. Lack of proper nutrition, and a lack of interest in food when on meth, had caused him to lose weight from his already thin physique. But like many fellow users, he’d developed a sort of hard, rope-like musculature that could be astonishingly strong when he was high. He told her that they were now going to her apartment, where they were going to get busy. And if she screamed, he’d cut her fucking head off.
What he’d actually done was worse. “Slaughtered” was the word that reporter Ariadne Stupenagel had used, quoting her unnamed police sources. He liked the press coverage in all its macabre detail—it gave his “work” a sort of religious quality. The killing certainly released a lot of anger, so that after it was over, he was able to calmly clean himself up and then slip out of the apartment with no one the wiser.
Still, forcing women to take him into their apartments as opposed to talking his way in was a change in the way he liked to do things, and it made him uncomfortable. He recognized that he was taking a greater risk of being discovered.
Then there was the woman at Mullayly Park, which was yet another change and even more risk. Attacking her had been a spur-of-the-moment decision. He’d been out wandering the streets, wondering how he was going to score more meth when the last of his supply—one more hit—was gone. He wasn’t really even interested in raping or hurting her; the bushes in a park weren’t his style, at least not yet. Robbery had been the motivation, and it almost backfired.
Fortunately, the little Hispanic girl over in Bed-Stuy had taken care of both of his needs. The bloodlust was sated and he had enough cash to stay high for a week.
Time to party
, he thought as he reached the six-story public housing complex off Watson Avenue. The building was an ugly, unimaginative box built of dull red bricks, just one of many similar public housing complexes and tenements that dominated Soundview.
The security intercom and locking gate had long since been destroyed by vandals, so Kadyrov was able to just enter the building and make his way to the stairs leading to the third floor. He walked
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